I retired on 1 October, 2013, a few days shy of 65, and a month short of being entered for the REF. Cunning eh? It brought to an end a solid baby-boomer career, one not without its tribulations, but tribulations carrying a lesser degree of threat than that faced by my successors. For Paul Higgs and Fiona Stevenson, and independently of their excellent credentials and accomplishments, the academic life would become more fraught.
The new UCL Provost was a little slow on the uptake before being informed that a professor he’d neither come across nor heard of was leaving after many a year of service. When prompted he wrote to thank me, rather spoiling his kindly-worded token of appreciation by including a profuse apology for not realising before that I’d gone (not a letter for framing on the toilet wall then). No toaster either.
Thanks to the generosity of Paul Higgs, whose initiative it was, and of Graham Hart, who supported and funded it in his role as Dean, I was treated to an event to celebrate my UCL career. Paul asked me who I would like to speak/attend. As for speakers, I took a calculated risk by suggesting close colleagues with whom I’d taught over the years, at Charing Cross HMS, The Middlesex HMS and latterly at UCL HMS. Into this category came David Blane and Ray Fitzpatrick, and I was extremely grateful and fortunate that Fiona Stevenson too wanted to contribute. Other speakers were Nicky Britten, James Nazroo and Gareth Williams, each of whom had careers closely interwoven with mine, and each of whom I judged decent enough not to stray too far into negativity. It was a lovely event and a balanced programme, and so many of my academic friends and colleagues, plus some of my favourite and most inspiring former students turned up, which is always a gratifying surprise because of a natural inclination to anticipate an audience of six. Thanks to all, but especially to Gareth Williams. I later found out from Eva that Gareth, who discoursed with his characteristic fluidity and eloquence on the derivation and meaning of the name ‘Scambler’, was already far from well. He is a sociologist and, more importantly a person, for whom I had and have the greatest of respect, and I will return to his legacy in later fragments.
Was retirement traumatic? No. Was it a climax or an anti-climax? Both I suppose. But I was ready and had, with Annette, already decided on a strategy. We wanted to draw a line by taking sufficient cash to sort our finances, home and aspirations, and then to ‘move on’. There are two points to make here (how academic is that, ‘two points to make’?). The first is that as a baby-boomer my pension, for all that it was and is unimpressive by OECD and European standards, was nevertheless based on my final salary, which to my successors will strike as a luxury. The second is that I had anticipated and planned ‘a life after death’: in other words, I had no intention of ceasing altogether teaching, researching or writing. And so it has transpired. I escaped the increasingly punishing, Weberian ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy and being micro-managed; and I side-stepped the growing, Marxian commodification of mental labour. In short, I escaped the growing ‘crap component’ of academic careers and ‘careerism’.
One odd thing about retirement, one’s CV – that omnipresent indicator of value-added worth (increasingly, to one’s neoliberal institution) – ceases to register or matter. This is a psychological hurdle to jump even for us baby-boomers, and I’m not sure I’m entirely over it even now, some six years post-retirement. However, one of my daughters, Rebecca, suggested shortly after my retirement that I consider having a personal website, and utilising social media in general, and Twitter in particular. I have taken her up on this counsel and in the process been the continuing beneficiary of her expertise. My iPhone has become my omnipresent (post-)work station. Life after death has for me been virtual as well as actual. My website –www.grahamscambler.com – is replete with what in my CV retains some residual relevance, an up-to-date list of my publications, plus in excess of 300 blogs. I’ve enjoyed writing blogs on a range of issues, I think largely because: (a) I regard it as an opportunity to think aloud; (b) I’m not worried about people nicking stuff; and (c) people have been responsive. At the time of writing, towards the close of 2019, there have been around 225,000 views of my website. While I am sure others have a much greater ‘following’, I’m amazed and gratified at this level of interest.
So I lecture (on topics and at times of my choosing), give keynotes and seminars when invited, and write both for publication and in blogs. The publication statistics are revealing in more than one sense. In the five years prior to my retirement, 2008-13, I published four books (three of them edited), 16 chapters and 18 journal articles. In the five years since, 2013-19, I have published four books (two edited), 15 chapters and 12 journal articles. So not too much of a drop-off. This says something about me, though I’m not entirely clear what. I presumably enjoy what I once did for a living (maybe my career always had elements of a ‘calling’ to it after all); maybe I’m still on a rollercoaster and can’t stop; and certainly there are lessons here for management in higher education, notably that carrots matter and sticks might well be counter-productive (and metrical sticks are now the norm). But once more I’m jumping ahead. I retired in 2013 and it’s now 2019.
A final paragraph: I am often asked now for ‘career advice’, which is perhaps a function of the growing precarity of higher education as well as of longevity. This is what I tend to say. First, I get precarity, and the academy is a much-changed world. Second, I think young/starter academics now have to be flexible (which is ok) and proactive (which is tricky) in constructing/presenting their CVs. In other words, they have to ‘guess’ and hit exactly the right note in an era of unprecedented uncertainty, to present the right self to the right appointment panels. Third, they should always bear in mind – and I totally appreciate the incredulity and disdain with which such ‘advice’ might well be met – that the overwhelming need for a decent and sustainable income should/must not lead to the ‘taming’ of sociology and the community of sociologists. Finally, I insist that the careers of we baby-boomers were not necessarily walks in the park. I was, I think, hard working and productive, and arguably I still am; and I was certainly bloody-minded, when necessary openly defying my heads of department, attempts to make me redundant, and the imposition of crass and inappropriate blueprints for my survival. I was perhaps lucky to survive, but we sociologists must surely continue to fight for our freedom to pursue our own agendas. Otherwise, what’s the point?